ci-devant
\ seeduh-VAHN \, adjective;
1.
French . former: used especially in reference to a retired officeholder.
Quotes:
This self-indulgent aristo, the ci-devant banker Amédé Vincent, who had expiated his villainies upon the guillotine, was known to have been successful in abstracting the bulk of his ill-gotten wealth and concealing it somewhere...
-- Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel , 1919
…she had been Eisenhower's turbulent ambassador, single-handedly saving Italy from Communism, blissfully unaware that Italian Communists has little interest in leveling the classes—her great fear—and little sympathy for the ci-devant Soviet Union.
-- Gore Vidal, "The Woman Behind the Women," The New Yorker , May 26, 1997
Origin:
Ci-devant comes from the French word of the same spelling which literally means "heretofore."
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